by Rachel George, USA TODAY Sports

by Rachel George, USA TODAY Sports

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The case played out like many other NCAA violations.

College sports' governing body found a prominent football player at a Southeastern Conference school had accepted impermissible benefits. He was suspended and forced to repay the money. What came next, though, was unprecedented and could be a loophole used in the future to provide benefits for elite athletes.

After his suspension, Florida defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd was adopted, at age 20, by the man who provided those benefits.

Floyd, a junior for the seventh-ranked Gators and a possible first-round pick in the NFL draft, now receives far more from his adoptive father, Kevin Lahn, than he was punished for taking last year. Under NCAA rules, there are virtually no limits to what a parent can provide to an athlete but a slew of restrictions on what a player can receive from anyone else.

"(The adoption) was not something we planned, but it's been a natural fit," Lahn said in an e-mail to USA TODAY Sports.

Floyd declined comment through a Florida spokesman. But Lahn, who was dissociated from his alma mater, South Carolina, by the school in September 2011 as part of a major NCAA infractions case, says the adoption was a reflection of the feelings he and his wife, Tiffany, have for Floyd, and not a reaction to the NCAA suspension.

"My wife and I love Sharrif and he feels the same way about us," Lahn says.

Says Steve Gordon, a close friend of Floyd and Lahn: "There was no ulterior motive on either part. It was just that they bonded really well. (Adoption is) a huge load. You can't do it for an ulterior motive."

But Gordon also acknowledges Lahn's frustration over Floyd being suspended. "(Lahn) doesn't like to be told no, and it isn't that he's doing anything wrong," Gordon says. "He's doing what's in the best interest of that kid."

Floyd's case has some similarities to that of former Mississippi offensive lineman Michael Oher, whose story was told in Michael Lewis' book The Blind Side and movie of the same name. The Memphis native became an All-American at the alma mater of Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, a couple who took in Oher, enrolled him in a private school that their biological children attended and helped him to get eligible for college.

The NCAA reviewed his case because the Tuohys are Mississippi boosters and found no violations. The Tuohys later adopted Oher, a 2009 first-round draft pick by the Baltimore Ravens.

That the NCAA questioned Oher about his situation illustrates the loophole in Floyd's case. While NCAA rules experts caution that it's unlikely for this situation to become a widespread problem because of the commitment adoption requires, it does leave the association vulnerable to unscrupulous boosters, agents or other third parties who could skirt the rules.

John Infante, a former assistant compliance director at Colorado State and Loyola Marymount and author of the Bylaw Blog, says the NCAA likely wouldn't want to get involved in assessing the legitimacy of adoptions and trying to determine whether they have been done to formalize an existing relationship or to find a way around the rules to provide benefits.

"It's between a rock and a hard place, because, on one hand, you let this go, if you're saying this is the one thing we're not going to touch - parents and legal guardians - well then you've established a way around the rules where AAU coaches, runners, agents, boosters just adopt kids and start providing for them," he says. "You can basically do whatever you want."

NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn says examinations are made on a case-by-case basis. "If a student-athlete is adopted, from that point forward the individual would be treated as any other parent," Osburn said in an e-mail.

Post-adoption benefits

Becoming the Lahns' son meant Floyd, who grew up in a broken and poor family, would be provided for better than he had been at any other time in his life.

Lahn, a vice president of a commercial real estate company, leased an apartment and a vehicle - a 2012 Ford Explorer XLT - for Floyd shortly after the adoption in December, according to Lahn and documents obtained by USA TODAY Sports. The couple gave Floyd a credit card, which he uses mostly for food, and took him on a trip to Disney World, Gordon says.

Floyd has a room in the Lahns' 6,500-square-foot home on a golf course in Kennett Square, Pa., 35 miles west of Philadelphia. And for his 21st birthday in May, he met them in Miami for a trip that coincided with the couple's fifth wedding anniversary, Lahn says. That included a stay at the Mandarin Oriental, a luxury hotel, and a trip on the Jody Lee, a chartered, $3 million, 80-foot yacht, according to photos and updates on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook by Tiffany Lahn and others.

Posts to social media from a current teammate and former teammate of Floyd show he was joined by three other football players. Florida defensive linemen Ronald Powell and Dominique Easley were photographed with Western Kentucky safety Jonathan Dowling and Floyd in front of the yacht. Easley posted five photos to Instagram and Twitter along with photos of Floyd and Dowling in the Mandarin Oriental. Dowling also tweeted about the trip.

Dowling was kicked off the team at Florida for a violation of team rules in November 2010, when he was a freshman. He has remained friends with Floyd and Easley, who he says were his roommates at UF.

Although he is seen in photos posted by Easley, Dowling last month said: "I don't know nothing about that. I seen them a weekend, that weekend. I can't remember if they said they were going to Miami or something."

Easley and Powell declined comment through a Florida spokesman.

More than 50 tweets that weekend from Dowling and Easley include photos and references to a steak-and-lobster dinner and spending at least a day on the yacht. Nearly three dozen photos Dowling posted have been deleted from his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Florida senior associate athletics director Jamie McCloskey says Powell and Easley "were already in South Florida. They joined Sharrif and his family for an evening."

When asked by e-mail who paid for Floyd's teammates to be on the trip, Lahn replied: "Sharrif drove down by himself. Sharrif's friends came down in their car to Miami for the Hip Hop Festival in Miami that weekend. Sharrif stayed in the hotel room I paid for."

Pam Herriford, associate athletic director in charge of compliance at Western Kentucky, says she was unaware Dowling was on the trip. "We'll obviously look into and see what we find out," she says.

Lahn says he paid to charter the yacht as a surprise for his wife and Floyd. He added that he initially planned a bigger party on a larger boat for several of Floyd's teammates to celebrate his birthday.

"(I) ran it past Florida's compliance office and they told me that it was not a good idea to do so, so I scaled back the size of the boat and party and limited it to just family and friends," Lahn says.

According to NCAA bylaw 16.11.1.1, athletes and their family and friends can receive benefits as long as they are generally available to other students at the school and their family and friends. Generally, athletes would be allowed to receive benefits from the parent of a friend.

If Lahn paid for the other players on the trip, it could be a violation under bylaw 16.11.2.1 if Lahn is considered a representative of Florida's athletic interests. McCloskey says Lahn has not been given that distinction and declined to say whether the school has checked with the NCAA.

Whether that is reviewed could come down to a reasonableness test of sorts, says Infante and Nebraska law professor Jo Potuto, who served on the NCAA Committee on Infractions for nine years.

"The more it seems out of line with what you would expect parents of college kids to do, the more questions are going to be asked about it," Potuto says.

Pair's foundation linked to S.C. case

Floyd's relationship with Lahn came under scrutiny in 2011 after Floyd told Florida officials he'd accepted financial assistance from Lahn, who was also being investigated for benefits he provided to athletes at South Carolina and recruits.

They met in summer of 2009 through the Student Athlete Mentoring (S.A.M.) Foundation, a Delaware-based non-profit group whose stated mission is to help high school athletes with SAT and ACT preparation and organize visits to colleges and camps. Floyd, a Philadelphia native, was one of the first athletes mentored by Gordon before he started the foundation. Lahn was the foundation's treasurer.

According to Gordon, the foundation's president, Lahn assisted Floyd with living expenses when he came to Florida. For accepting $2,500 and other benefits, Floyd was suspended for games against Florida Atlantic and Alabama at Birmingham and forced to pay $2,700 to a charity of his choice.

After the decision in Floyd's case, Florida coach Will Muschamp defended the defensive tackle in statements that were critical of the NCAA.

"In my opinion, Sharrif is getting lumped into what is bad about college athletics," Muschamp said. "Sharrif is what is good about college athletics - his life is about survival, struggle, disappointment and adversity.

"The NCAA stated that he received preferential treatment; there is nothing preferential about his life."

In the 10 days after the NCAA's decision in Floyd's case, South Carolina dissociated Lahn and Gordon - also a South Carolina alum. The NCAA infractions report released in April said they made impermissible inducements to recruits from spring 2009 through February 2011 through the foundation and provided extra benefits to members of the Gamecocks men's and women's track and field teams in June 2010.

It was part of a larger NCAA investigation at South Carolina that resulted in a three-year probation, reduction in scholarships and a limit on official visits in football and track and field, among other sanctions.

Lahn was considered by the NCAA to be a representative of South Carolina's athletic interests because he donated more than $190,000 in his lifetime to the university, according to the infractions report. He was a former president of the Carolina Alumni Club of Philadelphia, a football season ticketholder and a member of the Gamecock Club.

Lahn, 50, says he met Floyd as a teenager attending George Washington High in Philadelphia. Lahn says he attended several of Floyd's games and Floyd would come to his house for S.A.M. parties. After Floyd went to college, he would stay with the Lahns on breaks and holidays. Like many other players involved in the foundation, Floyd found it easy to talk to Lahn, according to Gordon. Ron Cohen, Floyd's high school coach, describes Lahn as a "good-hearted person."

Lahn says he looked into adopting Floyd after his suspension in September and that it was completed Dec. 19. Pennsylvania adoption records are sealed, although several people close to the family and Florida confirmed that it took place.

"We made sure that his great grandmother was on board and she indicated to us she was," Lahn says. "We also notified the University of Florida compliance and coaching staff."

Under Pennsylvania law, Floyd could be adopted by the Lahns without the consent from his mother or great grandmother because he was older than 18. In some states, such as Florida, adults may still be adopted without consent but must first notify their biological families.

Floyd's sometimes tumultuous upbringing included being raised in part by his great grandmother, moving several times in high school and not knowing his father, who died when Floyd was young. By his own accounts, he lived in a neighborhood where selling drugs was common.

"Basically, the NCAA was telling Kevin for the next three years he could no longer be a part of Sharrif's life," Gordon says. "At that point, it was like taking your son away from you and saying he can't be your son for three years, you can rekindle the friendship or the father-son relationship after that. And Kevin said, 'No, that's not acceptable.' "

Lahns now guardian of Nigerian

Sitting on the shelf in the dining room of Gordon's New Jersey home is a photo of Floyd on the day of his adoption. In front of the bench in the courtroom, the 6-3, 303-pound tackle dwarfs Tiffany standing under his right arm and Kevin under his left. They're all smiling.

Though the path the Lahns have taken could provide a blueprint for boosters or agents looking to get around NCAA rules, those interviewed who know him paint a picture of Lahn as a kind man who has taken joy in helping the athletes involved in the foundation.

"He has no need for notoriety," Gordon says. " His only thing is to make sure that Sharrif gets through all this."

The Lahns have also taken legal responsibility for another athlete they met through the foundation. They are the legal guardians for Hendrix Emu, a 20-year-old Nigerian basketball player who Lahn and Gordon say has political asylum in the United States.

Neither the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services nor the Nigerian consulate could provide confirmation of Emu's status because those records are sealed.

According to Lahn, Emu fled Nigeria in 2003 with his family because of the dangers they faced there. After settling in England, Emu came to the USA in 2008 to attend high school with the goal of playing Division I basketball but found himself homeless before the foundation intervened.

"His father was in prison and his mother and sisters were living in England with no one to provide for them," Lahn says. "After his mother saw how I actually helped Hendrix while others (in the USA) tried to use him, his mother gave me legal guardianship."

Emu declined an interview request from USA TODAY Sports through an athletic department spokesman at Seward (Kan.) County Community College, for which he plays basketball.

Scott Willard, coach at the Miller School in Charlottesville, Va., had Emu on his team for a year as school officials helped him sort out his transcripts after stops at several schools.

"When Kevin got involved, he just did it to help the kid," Willard says. "He was the best thing to happen to Hendrix, Kevin was. There's no doubt. He was just trying to help a kid out of a really, really brutal situation."

Lahn says his non-traditional family was born of circumstance. He and Tiffany, 36, have full-time jobs and enjoy traveling so they have not started a family of their own.

"It is also difficult to bring new kids into this world when you have perfectly good kids like Sharrif and Hendrix who had such tough lives growing up," Lahn says. "The boys have someone to lean on for counseling, guidance and support, and Tiffany and I have the opportunity to enrich our lives by being parents, helping them with their classwork, following their games in person and on TV and looking forward to someday being grandparents.

"None of my family members are good athletes, me included," Lahn continues, "so with my genes I would never have the opportunity to give birth to kids who play football or basketball in college at such a high level. Sharrif and Hendrix have given me that opportunity."

Judging intentions of heart, wallet

Sonny Vaccaro says he sees the potential for wealthy boosters, agents or AAU coaches to use adoptions to skirt NCAA rules . He spent 30-plus years as a shoe marketing executive and making the summer basketball circuit what it is today, time that showed him the lengths people will go to in order to beat the NCAA.

"It is a loophole because you can't define what's in a person's heart," he says, "and they could argue, 'We love this child.' OK, but it is a loophole."

Donald Cofsky says he can recall 10-12 adult adoption cases among more than the 1,500 he has handled in his 25-plus years as an adoption attorney in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Most frequently, they're done to formalize a long-standing relationship.

But Cofsky, president-elect of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, warns against making assumptions in Floyd's adoption.

"The court found it legit and did it," Cofsky says. "If on the other hand there's a football program and you see that five of the guys who are going there are suddenly getting adopted by some local families or alumni, that'd raise some eyebrows."

Making a judgment in a case such as Floyd's isn't one the NCAA might want to get into. Ultimately, NCAA experts agree that it's unlikely the NCAA would try to discern the motivations for adoptions.

"I think you're almost in a null set," Potuto says of the potential for abuse in college athletics. "That doesn't mean there aren't boosters in cases who would do anything for a program. But this seems to be really on the outer limit of what a booster who's really invested in a program would be willing to do just to be able to do something that NCAA rules say he can't do."

Potuto and Infante say the NCAA is unlikely to add to its lengthy rule book given that the potential impact is minimal. But signaling to would-be rule breakers that adoption serves as a "Get Out of Jail Free" card isn't in the NCAA's best interest, Infante says.

"I see the potential for something that could be abused," he says. "I don't think you're gonna go see the top 20 basketball players and top 100 football players all of the sudden get adopted by boosters, agents, AAU coaches, somebody else wanting to profit off of them.

"I'm sure in a lot of cases the line between who is doing it to make a buck and who is doing it to get a kid at a certain school and then who's doing it because they've got a relationship with the kid, I think it's rarely truly one or the other."